Bond
Sitting under a spreading rain tree, passing lunch boxes around in a circle. Her plain jam sandwiches gobbled up while she digs into tamarind rice or idlis doused in molagapudi or aloo parathas. Some have little plastic boxes, with food hastily or carelessly thrown in. Others have starched napkins and a three tier tiffin carrier and cutlery. No matter, the food is passed around and mothers will never know the memories created from their food.
A boy offers cricket match tickets to a girl. She lashes out that her brother has just died. He says quietly, I know.
A teenager lugs home a crate of cherries from Kashmir for a little girl. She will never forget the first taste of cherries and that he remembered that she has been waiting for him.
A dark face drains of blood as a boy stands on the balcony, watching a girl tumble off a motorbike. She looks up at him in amazement. It’s not love at first sight. But it’s something that lasts forever.
Three boys, one earnest and nerdy, one the acknowledged ladies’ man and the third a cocky rebel – all make time for a troubled girl. They sit with her on the roof of her house, not saying much, just offering comfort with their presence so that the sunset is bearable for one more day.
Brother, father, brother, father – all lost too soon. Friend who was almost a brother, friend who was lost even when he was with us. The ones left behind need say nothing. The eyes and the hugs say all that must be shared.
A meeting in an airy, sunny office the day after the storm. A firm directive to be brave and to play the game, issued by an old lady who led by example. Who championed lost causes and wept secretly when the cause was lost.
A girl with a sympathetic gaze and steely backbone rallies behind a coward. Not until many years pass is there a shared knowledge of trauma and trouble. Unacknowledged, it makes for a deep but skewed friendship.
Blood? Blood is simply the red stuff in our veins that flows freely from slit wrists.
This is the water of life. This nameless bond that ties us together. It is the air we breathe together that keeps us alive in each other’s memories. That is enough.